VC04 - Jury Double (7 page)

“Day two at the twiddle-your-thumbs club.” A woman dropped into the seat beside her. “How are you holding up?”

Anne looked at the stranger blankly.

“You Kyra, me Donna? Remember? Donna Scomoda? Hey, you look great. Is your hair different?”

“A little.”

“Changes you.” The stranger’s dark eyes scanned her face without embarrassment, as though she were a photograph. “Don’t mind me, it’s my medical training: always eyeball the patient.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Used to be a nurse. Nowadays I freelance. TV commercials.”

In all her nights of channel-surfing, Anne couldn’t remember ever seeing anything like Ms. Scomoda’s six-ties-throwback bouffant.

“You haven’t
seen
me. But you’ve heard me. I record voice-overs.”

They chatted the better part of an hour. Donna did most of the talking; Anne threw in the occasional “uh-huh” and smiled her best Kyra smile. She kept looking around the benches for Mark.
Damn
.
Has something gone wrong?

Up at the front of the room, a phone rang. Somehow, the man with red hair knew instantly which of the three to answer. He bent toward the mike. “Sandro—Sandrovitch. Please present your summons to the clerk in the courtroom, right through those doors.”

A man in a denim shirt pushed up from his seat and lumbered toward the next room. Mark Wells bumped into him in the doorway, eyes searching and anxious.

Anne jumped up. “Mark!”

He came and embraced her. There wasn’t even a hint that he recognized her. “I’ve been waiting an hour in there. Didn’t they page you? Come on. I’ve fixed it with the prosecutor.”

He took her arm and steered her into the courtroom.

“If it please Your Honor,” he called out. “Could we approach the bench?”

The judge was a middle-aged woman with close-cropped silver-blond hair and an extraordinarily erect carriage. She fixed Mark with a quizzical stare.

He introduced himself. “I apologize for the interruption, Your Honor, but I represent Kyra Talbot, one of the jurors in your pool.” He explained that Mrs. Talbot and her ex-husband were having custody problems. “Next week, her son turns twelve. The court will decide custody and appoint a guardian. If Mrs. Talbot is on this jury, she won’t be able to make that hearing.”

The judge studied Anne with dubious eyes. “Mrs. Talbot, you should have mentioned this before you were accepted for the jury. Last week, you said jury service posed no difficulty for you. If this wasn’t a problem then, I fail to see why it’s a problem now.”

Mark’s jaw dropped. He turned to Anne, voice lowered. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were already impaneled?”

A chair squeaked across linoleum. A petite, wiry, dark-haired woman rose from a document-strewn table and came with brisk-clicking heels to the bench. “Your Honor, the People have reviewed this juror’s voir dire. We strongly object to having Mrs. Talbot on this jury.”

“Ms. diAngeli,” the judge reminded her, “the juror has already been impaneled.”

“We challenge for cause.” The prosecutor’s brown-eyed gaze met Anne’s straight-on, a mano-a-mano sizing up with no attempt at amiability. “Mrs. Talbot’s employer published an article in the
Manhattanite
magazine eighteen months ago.” DiAngeli slapped a back issue of the
Manhattanite
onto the bench. “The ‘Town Crier’ column. As you can see, it prejudged the case.”

The judge opened the magazine and scanned. “Mrs. Talbot, did you write any part of this article?”

“Actually, Your Honor, I’m photography editor for
Savoir
magazine. We share a publisher with the
Manhattanite
.”

The judge stared at the prosecutor. “Ms. diAngeli, let’s get real. I for one am sick of this slipshod, nitpicking voir dire. We’ve reached the point where a little accommodation is in order.” She turned. “Mrs. Talbot, please take a seat over there.”

Anne crossed to the spectator section and sat next to a bald-headed man whose pencil was flying across the
New York
magazine crossword puzzle. He glanced at her. “Egyptian god of the Nile, three letters?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

Voices eddied over from the bench, low but urgent. Mark was pleading. Prosecutor diAngeli was pleading. Finally the judge interrupted, curt and angry.

“Mr. Elihu.” She beckoned.

A gray-haired, stoop-shouldered man rose from the near table. Anne estimated his age as mid-seventies. He approached the bench. Four heads bent together.

Mark crossed the courtroom, grim-lipped. “Kyra. We have to talk. Not here. Outside.”

They went into the corridor and found a quiet alcove of nonfunctioning candy and snack machines.

“The problem’s Gina Bernheim. The judge.” Mark gave Anne a look of whimsical, charming helplessness. “She says there’s no legal basis to re-voir dire you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she won’t excuse you.”

It came at Anne like a tennis ball slammed across the net. “You said this was a formality—nothing to it.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d already been impaneled.”

“Isn’t there
anything
you can do?”

“Under other circumstances, we might have a little wiggle room to work it out. But Bernheim’s aiming for a Supreme Court nomination, and till she gets it, she’s observing every rule in the book—no exceptions.” Mark hauled a cellular phone from his attaché case. “There’s not much reason for Catch to come in next week to discuss custody. Not if you’re going to be stuck in court.”

She watched him tap a number into the keypad. She couldn’t believe his nonchalance.

“Catch Talbot, please—Mark Wells calling from New York.” He strolled to the window, braced a foot on a bench, stared down into the street. “Catch, that you? … Just fine, thanks. Look, I’m sorry for the late notice. But Kyra is on jury duty. The Corey Lyle trial, can you believe it? Looks like we’re going to have to change a few plans.”

Anne turned on her heel. Finding the bank of phones was easy. Finding a phone that worked was not. She dropped her last quarter into the last slot and dialed Kyra’s number at home. The call clicked through a shunt and she realized Kyra must be forwarding calls to her office.

A voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

Anne recognized her sister pretending to be a secretary.

“Mark couldn’t get me off. I mean, you off. So you’re still on.”

“But, sweetie, I can’t possibly—”

“We’ll discuss it later, as soon as I can get out of here.”

But there was no way of getting out before the entire jury had been impaneled, and that wasn’t until a quarter of five.

“Before I dismiss the jurors and alternates for the day,” Judge Bernheim announced, “it’s come to my attention that members of the Corey Lyle cult have threatened and even assaulted some of you. To guard against any such disturbances in the future, this jury will be sequestered.”

There were groans from the jury box.

“So when you come to court tomorrow, bring a suitcase with everything you’ll need for the next week.”

Anne hurried to the bank of pay phones in the corridor and dialed Kyra’s work number. An assistant said Kyra was on jury duty. She dialed the apartment and Juliana said Kyra was out of town.

“How long will she be gone?”

“Who can say? You know Kyra.”

“Would you tell her the jury’s sequestered and there’s no way I can do it?”

“Do what?”

“She’ll understand.”

As Anne broke the connection, another juror—a slender, African-American woman—came clattering down the corridor. She was wearing high spike heels that a pigeon would have had trouble squeezing into, and her hair hung in gleaming coils that looked hand-dipped in honey.

“Hey, Kyra—I have your betting sheets.”

“
My
betting sheets?” Anne wondered what on earth Kyra had been telling people.

The woman thrust several leaflets into Anne’s hand. They had a line drawing of a charging running back, football cradled to his chest. Heavy print warned:
This publication for reading matter only. Not to be used in violation of any law.

“Fill them out and give them back to me before the weekend. Let me know if you need more.”

“Thanks. I’ll look at them later.” Anne dropped a quarter into the phone slot and called her apartment, tapping in the code for the machine to replay messages.

“Anne,” an urgent male voice said, “are you there? It’s Tim Alvarez.” She had a sudden premonition of trouble. Tim was her father’s male nurse and live-in companion. Her father had reached that age where any news tended to be bad. “Could you give me a ring as soon as possible?”

She dropped another quarter into the slot and placed a collect call to Connecticut.

“A problem has come up.” Tim Alvarez sounded tense and pressured. “It’s your dad. We’ve got to talk in person. Today.”

“Couldn’t Kyra make it?” Kyra was their father’s favorite, and as a rule she handled his problems.

“Your sister’s on jury duty.”

SEVEN

6:40 P.M.

A
NNE PULLED HER GREEN
Toyota into the driveway and cut the motor. She delayed a moment, gazing out from behind the windshield at her father’s little corner of Connecticut.

Across the lawn, the woods were beginning to dim with twilight. In the pond, a frog was already crooning a love song.

The old house had aged well. The white wood siding had been recently repainted. The ivy was thick on the brick chimneys but neatly trimmed. The boxwood were clipped. Lights glowed in the downstairs windows.

She wished she could love the old place.

Her heels crunched across gravel. She lifted the brass knocker and thumped.

Through bubble-glass panes she could see a shadow hurrying toward her. The door opened and Tim Alvarez stood smiling the practiced smile he always bestowed on visitors.

“Sorry if I’m late. Traffic was awful.”

“Tell me about it.” A tall, thin young man, Tim Alvarez wore oversize steel-rimmed spectacles and a moppish brown hairdo. “I wish this could have been one of your father’s good days.”

She stepped into the front hall. The old half-forgotten silence rose up around her like a familiar smell.

“Some days he’s actually very alert. In fact he’s been alert enough to do a little pro bono legal work.”

“Really?” she said. “What cases?”

“Invasion of privacy stuff—
amicus curiae
briefs.”

She peeked into the library. Stacks of books and magazines and files wriggled up from the floor. Her mother would never have allowed it. An unwatched television set was quietly laughing to itself. “What’s so urgent?”

“Let’s save that till we’re all here,” Tim suggested. “We’re waiting for your father’s old law partner.”

The old Yankee floorboards groaned louder under his weight than hers. At the end of the corridor he stood aside. She stepped into the living room.

Her father was stretched out in a leather recliner by the window, tilting in a wedge of dying daylight. He had a woolen afghan spread over his legs and he was wearing a canvas harness on his chest. He was hanging up the telephone.

She raised her voice to a singsong. “Hello, Leon.”

At the sound of his name he turned, his expression part curious, part hopeful. With his gray hair wisping in a crown around his head, he looked like a dandelion gone to seed.

She crossed the Tibetan rug, stepping over worn figures of phoenixes and dragons.

His pale gray eyes finally recognized her. He frowned. “I was expecting your sister—the prodigal career girl.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Kyra’s on jury duty.” She leaned down to kiss his cheek. Her lips touched stubble. Tim hadn’t shaved him today. “What’s all this?” She touched the harness.

“I dial the hospital in Stamford and put the receiver over my heart. The telephone relays my heartbeat. My pacemaker talks things over with the computer. If I’m beating too slow or too fast, the computer dispatches an ambulance.”

He lifted the harness from his chest and hooked it over the back of the recliner. The elbow of his left arm was almost rigid, with barely ten degrees of flexibility.

“I hope the computer says you’re doing okay today.”

“It made the usual satisfied noises.” He pushed himself up from the recliner, got his legs steady under him, and moved toward the sofa.

She remembered him as a tall man, but nowadays he wasn’t. It pained her to see the difficulty he had walking. His right leg dragged. She wondered if he’d had another ministroke.

“Tim, the eternal girl-student looks tired and thirsty.” Years ago Leon had decided that Kyra was the achiever, the career girl, and Anne was the laggard, the bookworm. “I’d say she’s earned a drink, coming all this way.”

“Scotch and water,” Anne said.

“The computer says I can have the same,” Leon said.

“Are you sure?” Tim Alvarez’s tone was doubtful.

“Sure I’m sure.” The furniture had been arranged so that Leon always had the edge of a table or the back of a chair to grasp. He lowered himself carefully onto the sofa and spread a small quilt over his legs.

She took the chair facing him.

He handed her a small wrapped package from the coffee table. “This is for Toby. Would you see that he gets it?”

It felt like a book. “I’ll be glad to.”

A kind of formality descended. Leon looked up at her. “How’s your beau?”

“I don’t have a beau.”

“You got rid of your stockbroker friend?”

“Larry and I divorced just before mother died.”

Leon shook his head. “My daughters sure married lulus—Kyra hitched herself to a neurotic and you wound up with a bum. I don’t suppose your lawyer friend is still in the picture?”

Anne bit back annoyance. She could never tell how much of her father’s tactlessness was old age and how much was intentional goading. “That was two years ago.”

“You got rid of him too?”

“It didn’t work out.”

“I liked him.”

“I did too.” Anne didn’t like the way the discussion was headed. She saw a game of solitaire half completed on the coffee table. “Are you playing cards by yourself?”